A Place In Time
by Casandra
Summary: Brooke finds a letter among her collected belongings after moving out of Peyton’s house. Her guilt from the school shooting reemerges.


**Author: **Casandra

**Email: **September 2006

**Disclaimer: **I don't own anything here, Mark and Co. get that honor. But damnit, give em to me! I want to see smoochies!

**Warning: **Femslash ahead. Grow up if it bothers you.

**Rating: **PG-13

**Feedback: **Cookies for you! Everyone likes cookies, right?

**Distribution: **With my permission, gladly.

**Spoilers: **Major ones for 3x16 and 3x17. Also some from the third season finale.

**Summary: **Brooke finds a letter among her collected belongings after moving out of Peyton's house. Her guilt from the school shooting re-emerges.

**Author's Note: **I've been wanting to do a post 'With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Slept' fic ever since the episode aired. Or more precisely, after 'Who Will Survive and What Will Be Left of Them', and the Brooke and Peyton disconnect until the end of the episode. We never really saw why Brooke stayed away, and how that affected Peyton. We have a vague idea of why, but it was glossed over for the sake of Lucas' grief. So this is my take, though it's post season finale, not post shooting episode.

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The sound of crinkling under my feet as I walk the short distance back to the haphazard makeshift room I've been reprieved with at Rachel's pulls me from my once again dark, revenge filled musings. Stopping in my tracks I reach down to pull a crumpled piece of notebook paper out from under the heel of my new Jimmy Choo pumps. Retail therapy always mended a shattered heart after all. Still clutching the tattered leaflet in my hand, I drop down onto the soft mattress and attempt to uncrumple it to read the nearly illegible writing on it. I can feel the breath I was attempting to take stall and catch in the base of my throat, the recognition of who's handwriting I'm suddenly looking at washing over me.

Peyton.

I try to push back the still ever present feeling of anger and betrayal, instead steeling myself, determined to read whatever is she might have to say. Even if it wasn't intended for my eyes. From the look of it, I think she was just writing random tangents down, a lot of the comments are all jumbled together and there is no real cohesion to the page at all.

_I don't understand how she can just abandon me here. I'm feeling needy, yes. And I'm probably being a completely selfish bitch for even wishing this, but I can't help but want her here with me. Here instead of with him. _

_The hospital room they put me in is nice. All private with a direct view down into what the nurses tell me is the tranquility garden. I don't think there is anything remotely tranquil about a hospital though. _

_Except for maybe the morgue. _

_Tranquility is not the sterile septic smell of ammonia and disinfectant. It's not another pinch as a needle sinks into your already tender and raw flesh. It's not the acrid smell of luke warm food, mass produced on a conveyer belt at three specific times each day. And it's certainly not the look of pity when the nurse's aides come in to check your blood pressure and temperature, giving you that now all too familiar glance of sadness, shaking their heads slightly as they leave the room, your eyes never lifting from the stark white tile of the ceiling._

_No._

_It's sitting on the deck of a boat, sunbathing under the early summer heat as your best friend flashes the horny teenage boys flying by you, their wake rocking your boat just gently enough to cause you to sit up and giggle at her complete lack of self control. _

_It's shopping for a formal dress with your date, without having to worry about all the ordinary 'what if they don't like my hair-my shoes-my makeup' drama that surrounds all the other typical high school dances. Because she thinks you're hot no matter what you wear. And never hesitates to tell you so._

_It's the simpleness of sitting together, you staring out your bedroom window into the cloudless afternoon sky, her gazing at you from a reclined position on your bed. Silence isn't deafening here, it's comforting._

_It's a hug backstage at a concert for your dead mother. In a time of sadness and mourning, she's there, holding you, as Fall Out Boy plays to the packed club that you've helped create. It's loud and bright, and yet you're completely at peace because of a pair of arms wrapped tightly around you, a head nestled snugly against yours._

_It's knowing as you lay on the floor of your high school library, most likely bleeding to death, a strong shoulder propping up your tiring body, that she's safe. You could be taking your very last lungful of air, and it's ok, because Brooke is going to be alright. She wasn't touched by the violence that's trapped you inside. _

I'm not even aware that I'm crying until I see the wrinkled paper I'm reading from dampen as a tear slips off the bridge of my nose to the parchment clutched so tightly in my grip. She's wrong. I couldn't help but be touched by the carnage of that day, the sheer terror that pervaded my entire being as I searched desperately around that quad for Peyton. It's a feeling that will never leave me. The second my feet touched the concrete of the quad I knew that she was still inside. Those few hours that she was gone, where I couldn't find her, when I didn't know, they could have just been months. The seconds on the clock ticked by so slowly that I could feel myself aging with them.

Taking a deep breath, wiping away the remainder of my tears in the process, I continue reading, having to tilt the paper slightly cockeyed to find her next set of thoughts.

_I remember wondering how she would mourn me if I had died in that library. Morbid thoughts, sure. But not uncommon for me. I'd often wondered what my mother……..mothers……felt like as they slipped away from everything they loved. I pictured her in a long black dress, makeup perfectly lacquered on, hair shimmering in the golden sun high above her. _

_The priest reciting the usual sermon, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. _

_Yea as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. _

_And she stands there, quietly, staring at my open grave. No tears, nothing. Just utter calm. So very unlike her. No, she'll hold my father's hand I think, rub his back as he openly weeps before the rest of the mourners. Lucas, Haley, Nathan, Mouth. But Brooke doesn't cry. And the knowledge of that, I'm still uncertain if that comforts me or not._

_The nurses don't understand. My father doesn't either. He thinks the depression is starting to seep in. The fact is that I need Brooke. I miss her. We've never been voluntarily apart for this long since forever. _

_Four days._

_I've sat here in this hospital bed, a constant eye towards the door. Waiting for her to come bounding in, a bag of assorted get well goodies in one hand, a oversized plush teddy bear in the other. She plops herself right beside me on the bed, ever conscious of the hole still seeping in my leg. We talk, we joke, we giggle, we snuggle in to watch bad daytime soap operas. And everything is ok. Because she's here. She hasn't abandoned me, she hasn't forgotten about me._

_And then reality crashes back in. I'm here, alone. And she's not done any of those things I've wished for since I was rolled into surgery hours after Lucas carried me out to the waiting ambulance. I rode to the hospital alone, a paramedic holding onto my hand, assuring me that I was going to be just fine. _

_Not Brooke._

_It hurts. I need her here with me, and she's not. I don't begrudge Lucas, she needs him too. I've seen the news reports. There's nothing to do here but channel surf and think too long and too hard about all of life's little mysteries. _

_And I'm tired of both._

_But I know. And I'll miss Keith too. But I can't help but wonder, why she hasn't even stopped by once to check on me. And then the truth sinks in. _

_She just loves him more than she loves me._

I flip the notebook paper over once, twice, a third time, making sure that I've read everything that Peyton scribbled down from her hospital bed. I can't seem to catch my breath, the bile rising to my throat, cutting off all the necessary oxygen I need to inhale. I knew I was being selfish, I knew that she needed me. But instead of going to her, I stayed glued to Lucas' side.

I lay back on the soft mattress, gently cradling the tattered paper in my hands. I know why I did it. But that doesn't make my actions any less deplorable. My guilt will probably never cease to eat at me. I knew she was going to be ok, the at least twice daily phone calls to the hospital, pretending to be her sister, stuck in Europe, checking on her condition and prognosis still not any kind of excuse. The unit clerk always giving me the same answer.

She's in stable condition and resting comfortably.

I had to wonder how comfortable she could be with a bullet hole in her leg. But still, that wasn't enough to motivate me to go and see her.

The truth was simple. I was scared. Not just in the 'oh my god, jump out of your seat at a horror movie' way. No, this was a paralyzing fear, constantly clutching at my chest, my nerves felt like they were going to pop right through my skin. Like a bony finger had traveled up my spine and rested at the base of my neck.

I could have lost her. She could have died, been here that morning and just gone by afternoon. I would never get to see her again. Hug her. Hold her hand. Loop my arm through hers as we walked along to our next class. Snuggled down in bed together while we watched some random late night talk show. It could have all just been……..gone. She would have been gone. And it was the worst feeling I could ever imagine.

Like she tried picturing her funeral, I pictured everyone's BUT hers. I would cry for Lucas, hold Karen's hand and offer any sort of comfort, knowing there really wasn't any to give. I would weep for Haley as well. My room-mate, my friend. I would hold her to me as Nathan was lowered into the cold hard ground.

But Peyton was right. I wouldn't cry for her. I wouldn't be able to. I'd be shattered, my soul ripped in half. A blank mask settled on my face, my posture rigid and unreadable. My body would stay standing there for as long as need be, but I wouldn't really be there. I'd watch, completely detached as her casket was slowly settled into it's final resting place. And I wouldn't cry. Because it would take my soul for me to shed any type of tears. And that Brooke would have been gone the moment she learned that her best friend, her soul mate, was dead.

But she obviously doesn't realize any of that. She thought I just didn't care. That I didn't love her enough. How can I ever explain that it was because I loved her TOO much that I stayed away. It makes no sense, not even to me.

My guilt was what propelled me to go to her that night. To apologize. To let her know that I cared, that I was wrong for leaving her broken and bleeding in that hallway of shattered glass and ruined lives. And like always, she shrugged it off. In fact, told me just as much as she had written on the paper in my hands. It was easier for her to be in pain knowing that I was safe. And instead I insisted that it was Lucas that kept her alive, not the connection I share with her. I was looking for a fight even then I suppose. But I couldn't let her see how truly scared I still was. The possibility of losing her was still so real in my mind. Made visceral by the aluminum crutches tucked under her arms.

I sigh, glancing over towards my two suitcases thrown sloppily into the corner of Rachel's spare bedroom. Our web is so very tangled. Peyton loves Lucas. I love Lucas. I love Peyton. She loves me? She was so worried that I loved him more than her, and now our friendship is over because……why? Because I can't stand the fact that she might love him too? Or maybe because I'm afraid she loves him more than she loves me. My my, haven't we truly come full circle.

I hit her too. Glancing down at my palm as it was a traitorous foreign object I realize that I've never once struck out in anger. But maybe it wasn't anger. Maybe that fear of loss just never dissipated. And instead of talking things out with her, trying to make myself understand how she could still be in love with Lucas after everything that's happened the last two years, I just hauled off and smacked her.

The look of shock and hurt that flashed across her porcelain features as my hand returned to its resting place at my side is another image that will haunt me forever. But I'm so afraid of being hurt, of not being able to count on anybody, that I lash out first and deal with the consequences of it all later. Or not deal at all.

I pull the sheet of paper up once again, glancing back over the pen strokes, each little paragraph in it's own little world on the page. I need to talk to Peyton about this, at least give it back to her. It's been two days and already I miss her terribly. It feels like half of me is just absent from the whole, and it's horrible. Talking to her may lead to another fight. Or it might just help heal all the wounds I've been carrying around for months. But I guess I won't really know until I get off my ass and try.


End file.
